A second figure appeared. They stood together some fifteen yards from the road, level with the pick-up.
They were in uniform, their skins were dirt smeared.
"I am a busy man, Crane. I have better things to do."
Crane came forward.
"You should meet Holt, Major."
Major Zvi Dan stared Holt up and down. "How's he done?"
"Acceptable."
"Is he good enough to go?"
"The first day he'd have had us identified three times. Second day once, third day once. He's just been under your glasses for an hour, that makes him acceptable."
"Get in the back," the major said coldly.
Rebecca watched. She saw that Crane carried his back pack easily, like it was a part of his body, along with the rifle with the elongated telescopic sight. She saw that the younger man came more slowly, as if the back pack were a burden, as if he had never before carried an Armalite rifle.
"What's your time table, Crane?"
"Shit and shower first, long sleep. Tomorrow, aerial photographs and maps, pack the kit. Move tomorrow night."
She watched Crane climb easily into the open back of the truck, slinging his backpack ahead of him, she saw the young man struggle to scramble aboard and get no help.
The Mercedes was clean, the merchant carried the code in his head.
In the darkness of early night, before the stars were up, the merchant had lifted the bonnet of the car and loosened a battery cable.
He was a little off the main road. He was parked above the sparse lights of the village of Qillaya.
It was a routine for him. If he had been bounced by a Syrian patrol or by a group of Shi'a militia, or by a band of the Hezbollah, then he would have had the explanation that his car's engine was broken, that he could not put it right in the darkness.
He wrote his message, a jumble of numerals on a scrap of paper.
He had to walk some fifty yards from the car to the angle of the road. There was always danger in these moments, on the approach to a dead letter drop. He could take every precaution during his travelling, during his halts, but the moment of maximum danger was unavoidable. If the dead letter drop was compromised he was gone. He was breathing hard. On the angle of the road was a rain ditch, cut to prevent the tarmacadam surface being eroded during the spring floods when the higher snows melted. In the ditch was a rusted, holed petrol drum. He left his messages in the drum, he received his messages from the drum. He was not more than 2000 yards from the U N I F I L zone, there was a checkpoint of NORBAT 2000 yards down the main road. He was eleven miles from the Good Fence, the Israeli frontier. He was a few minutes' walk, a few minutes' drive, from the sanctuary of the NORBAT
checkpoint, from the safety of his country's frontier.
It was always the worst time for him, when he was within touch of sanctuary, safety, when he was short moments from turning his back on the checkpoint and the Good Fence and starting the drive back into the Beqa'a.
He had the paper in his hand. The merchant bent over the drum, searched for the hole into which he would place his coded report of the progress south through the valley of a girl with a donkey bomb.
The torch light flooded his face.
He thought he was losing his bowels.
He could see nothing behind, around, the blinding beam of the torch.
He waited for the shot.
The urine was driving from his bladder.
"It's Zvi, Menny. Heh, I am sorry."
The torch light went out. The merchant stood his ground, could see nothing.
There was an arm around his shoulder, stifling the trembling of his body.
"I think you pissed yourself. Heh, I am truly sorry.
There was someone who had to see your face."
The merchant saw the shadow looming behind the shape of his friend, but the shadow came no closer.
The merchant whispered, "Couldn't you have used a night sight?"
"He wanted clear light on your face, it was important . . . "
For ten minutes the merchant and Zvi Dan sat by the rain ditch. The merchant made his report in incisive detail. Zvi Dan gave his instructions, handed over the package.
The merchant went back to his car. First he collected an old pair of slacks from the boot and quickly changed into them, then he refastened the battery cable. He drove back to the main road and then on to the village of Yohmor where he would spend the night. In the morning he would advise the elders of the village on the spare parts they needed to buy for the repair of their communal generator, and how much those parts would cost.
Holt started up in his chair. He had been dozing. He was brought back to life by the thud of the boots on the plank slats of the verandah. God, and was he lucky to have dozed. Percy Martins was still in full flow and the station officer seemed to suffer from a private agony, and the girl was reading a Hebrew romance with a lurid cover.
The verandah was outside the officers' canteen at the army base. There were pots of flowers, and a jungle of vine leaves overhead, and there was coffee and Coca-Cola to drink if anyone could be bothered to go inside to the counter to get it for himself.
The girl was reading the book and ignoring Martins like Jane had been able to do when they were in his or her London flat and he was watching the cricket on television. The station officer hadn't quite the nerve to turn his back on the reminiscing. Martins was remem-
bering his time in Cyprus, spook on the staff of Government House, recommending his old strategies for application in the Occupied Territories.
Holt looked behind him, turned in his chair. He could see that both the major and Crane were still wet from face washing, and he could see that it had been a fast job because there were still smears of dark camouflage cream under the ear lobes and down at the base of their throats.
Crane said, "Long day tomorrow, H o l t . . . "
Martins said, "Pleased you've returned from wherever, Major. Something I'd like sorted out. I am informed I have to sleep in an hotel. I would have thought you could put me up on camp."
Major Zvi Dan said, "Not possible."
The girl, Rebecca said, "Do you like cocoa?"
Holt said, "Ages since I've had it. Quite."
Crane said, "Get to your bed, Holt. Now."
The station officer said, "I'm off early in the morning, back to Tel Aviv, I'll be gone before you've surfaced
... Give it your best effort. Look forward to welcoming you back. Holt. Sergeant."
Holt stood and shook the station officer's hand, a damp hand and a limp grip. Crane wandered off towards the counter in search of food.
Percy Martins drummed his fingers on the table. "I would like to discuss the matter of my accommodation further."
The girl, Rebecca, was back in her book. Holt saw the mud dirt on the major's boots.
"Goodnight all," Holt said.
He went to the room they had allocated him. A white painted cubicle, with a bed and a table and a chair, and three hangers on a nail behind the door. He didn't bother to wash, and he wasn't allowed to use toothpaste.
He peeled off his jogging shoes and his shirt and trousers. He switched off the light, flopped on the bed.
He had slept fourteen hours the night before, and he was still tired. The day had been divided in two. There had been the kit part of the day, and there had been the route planning part of the day. He didn't think it was from choice, he assumed it was from necessity, but at least Crane had talked to him, at him. Down the corridor was Crane's room, and next door to that the kit was laid out for packing in the morning. Crane had talked to him, at him, when they were with the Intelligence guys, when they were looking at the aerial photographs that footprinted the Beqa'a.
He heard the knock at the door.
He didn't have the time to reply. The door opened.
He saw the silhouette of the girl against the lit corridor. He saw that she carried a mug, steaming.
Holt laughed out loud, "Not the blo
ody cocoa?"
She laughed back at him. The curtains were thin, and when she kicked the door shut behind her, the floodlights outside streamed through. He could see that she was laughing.
"It's the best thing to make you sleep."
"You're very kind."
"And you are going to Lebanon tomorrow, so you need to sleep." She sat on the bed. She wore a deep cut green blouse, and a full skirt.
He thought her laughter was an effort. He thought she had sad eyes, and there were care lines on the edge of her mouth. He took the mug from her, held it in both hands, sipped at the thick stirred cocoa. He had not had cocoa since before he went to boarding school, since his mother used to make it for him on cold winter evenings when he was a small boy.
Holt tried to smile. "It's supposed to be a secret, me going into Lebanon tomorrow."
"My husband was in Lebanon. He went with the first push, and then he went back again in the last year of our occupation. After the first time he was a changed man. He was very bitter when he came home to me. Before he went he used to play the saxophone in a small jazz band where we lived. He never played after he came back. He was an architect, my husband. There were many casualties in his unit, tanks. I used to wonder what an architect, a saxophone player, was doing driving a tank in Lebanon. My husband said that when the IDF
first went into Lebanon they were welcomed by the Shi'a people, the people in the villages threw perfumed rice at the tanks, by the time they left that first time they were hated by the same Shi'as. The mines were in the roads, the snipers were in the trees. He was called up again for Lebanon in '85, just before the retreat started. The leaders, the generals, of course they didn't call it a retreat, they called it a redeployment. He used to write to me. The letters were pitiful. He used to say he would never go back again, that he would go to prison rather than serve another tour in Lebanon. He used to say that the basic rule of survival was to assume the worst, at every moment, to shoot first. Lebanon bru-talised him. A week before he was due to come out, from the second tour, he wrote to me. He wrote that they had painted on their tank the words, 'When I die I will go to Heaven, I have already been through Hell.'
He was killed the day after. He was shot by a village boy near Joub Jannine. They knew it was a village boy because they caught him in their follow up search, he was 13 years old. He was 13 years old and through hate he shot my saxophone player, my husband. That is Lebanon, Holt."
"I am sorry."
"It is the way of life for us. We are Jews, we are condemned to a permanent perdition of warfare."
"I'm sorry, but my viewpoint is from a long way away. I'm not trying to be an impertinent outsider, but I think you've brought much of it on yourselves. Again, I'm sorry, but that's what I feel."
"When you go into Lebanon you will be part of us.
There is no escape from that."
"You know my quarrel, why I go?"
"I've been told. Your leaders, your generals, want a man killed. They need you for assistance at the execution."
"The man killed the girl I loved," Holt said. He raised the cocoa mug to his mouth. The cocoa spilled from his lips, dribbled down onto his new found tan from the beach at Tel Aviv.
"Do you go into Lebanon for the girl that you loved, or for your leaders and your generals?"
Holt shook his head. He said softly, "I don't know."
"Better you go for your girl."
"Did he love you, your husband, when he died?"
"He wrote in his letters that he loved me."
"My girl, she snapped at me, the last words that she spoke. We were quarrelling . . . Can you see what that means? The last time we spoke, the last memory I have of her, is of argument. That's a hell of a weight to carry."
"Close your eyes, Holt."
His back was against the pillow that was propped up against the wall. His eyes closed. He felt her movement on the bed. He felt the softness of her lips on his cheek.
He felt the moisture of her lips on his mouth. He felt the gentleness of her fingers on the bones of his shoulder.
"My husband, Holt, my saxophone player, he used to write to me from Lebanon that the feel of my mouth and my hands and my body was the only sanity that he knew."
With the palms of his hands he reached to the smooth angles where her cheeks came down to her throat. He kissed her, as if with desperation.
"Remember only her love, Holt. Make her love your talisman."
The memories were a rip tide. Walking with Jane in the sunshine of spring on the moorland hills. Sitting with Jane in the darkness of a London cinema. Lying with Jane in the wet warmth of her bed.
His eyes were tight shut. He moved aside in the bed.
He heard her peeling away her blouse, pushing off her shoes, dropping down her skirt. He felt the lovely comfort of her against his body.
He cried out, "It doesn't help her, cannot help her, killing him."
"Until he is dead you have no rest. Her memory will only be torment. Love me, Holt, love me as you would have loved her. Love me so that you can better remember her when you are in Lebanon."
When he woke, she was gone.
As if she had never been there. As if he had dreamed of Jane.
12
His eyes ached, his forehead hurt.
Crane had the maps in front of him, and the aerial photographs. An Intelligence officer took Crane through the photographs.
It was the close work that pained him, caused him to blink, but this close work was inescapable, critical. The pilotless drone had flown the previous day. The Delilah drone had flown from inside Israel, and taken a route north from Metulla and over Marjayoun in the security zone. The drone had clipped the edge of the NORBAT
sector and flown on at a height of 15,000 feet towards Yohmor. By the time that it cleared Lake Qaraaoun at the southern end of the Beqa'a valley, the camera set in the belly of the Delilah was picturing the ground beneath. The drone's flight path had taken it along the western side of the valley, over small villages, over goat herds and the boys who minded them, over women hoeing the weeds out of the stony fields in preparation for the planting of corn crops, over the steep sloping tiled roofs of Shi'a villages, over Syrian army positions, over the main road running north east from Khirbet Qanafar to Qabb Elias, over the small vineyards from which would come in the autumn the delectable bottles of Cabernet Sauvignon and Pinot Noir, over the Syrian headquarters garrison at Chtaura across the Beirut to Damascus road, and then east, and then south along the Bar Elias to Ghazze road. And, of course, Delilah, a speck in a clear midday sky, had passed over a tented camp that was surrounded by a fence of coiled barbed wire and a bulldozed ditch. The drone had been seen by many people. It had been seen by the boys with the goats, and by the farming women, and by the men sitting outside their village coffee houses, and by bored Syrian soldiers, and by Abu Hamid as he lectured his class in the workings of the DShKM heavy anti-aircraft machine gun, and by Fawzi as he negotiated a transaction with a headman, and by a merchant who drove an old Mercedes car. Seen by many people, but unremarkable to all of them. The drone flew twice a week, it was accepted.
The photographs had been taken especially for the benefit of Sergeant Crane.
He studied each one with the help of a stereoscope.
It was the stereoscope that killed his eyes, brought the throb to the deep recess where his retina was diseased.
Had to use the stereoscope, because that was the instrument that threw the flat vision of the photographs into a three dimensional reality.
Crane spoke only rarely to the youngster. He thought of him as the "youngster". He believed that he was not a nursemaid, and his experience of handling novice troops had taught him that to talk too frequently was to confuse. He expected that Holt should listen, and above all that he should watch. Noah Crane did little by chance. He demanded that Holt should concentrate, watch everything, react on it, remember it.
Most times his conversation was with the Intelligence officer. He tr
usted the man. The planning of the route required trust, and the man had served him well. Most recently this gawky, spider-like Intelligence officer had carried out the detail of the planning for the sniping of a Hezbollah unit commander. His care had earned the trust of Noah Crane. They talked in the Hebrew tongue.
Crane had two maps on the table in front of him. The one he marked, bold lines for the route, decisive crosses for the stop positions, the other he left clean.
The Intelligence officer gathered up the photographs.
Noah Crane folded the map that was not marked. He spoke from the side of his mouth to Holt, staccato, as if it were obvious.
"See the way I fold it. The way I fold it doesn't show which section interests me, it concertinas out. And I never put my fingers on it. When we're out there, when we're using it, we will always use a pointer, like a stick, to indicate. We never leave marks on the map, finger marks."
"So that if we are captured they don't know what our target was?"
Crane said, matter of fact, "We don't talk about capture. Capture is not thinkable. It is in case we lose the map."
He saw the youngster look away.
He led Holt to the kit room, the room beside his own.
He was a loner. For years, as a sniper, he had taken responsibility for himself, for his own skin. Noah Crane had never gone after promotion, he had shunned taking novice soldiers under his wing. He didn't bloody well know how to raise the spirits of the youngster, didn't bloody know. He could see the youngster was scared witless, standing close to him, walking c lose to him, but he didn't bloody well know how to breathe confidence into the youngster. And it worried him. He needed the youngster to begin well
.. and how? How to get the youngster doing it right. That was an agony to Noah Crane, a second agony to the pain behind the tiredness of his shooting eye.
Holt was young enough to be Noah Crane's son, and he had never fathered a son, never brought up a son.
'Course he didn't know how to communicate with the youngster.
He had laid the kit out in the same way he always did.
At Close Quarters Page 20